Hiring Solutions

Are You Ready for New Business?

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Many small business owners focus on making money and paying bills. But, they fail to plan for and build systems to take on new clients. Then, to compound matters, they typically fail to hire the right people to manage all the new business.

What is your capacity to handle new clients without reducing the quality, price and service you deliver?

Start now for tomorrow’s success. As entrepreneurs, we believe we can automatically handle an increase in sales volume. It’s what we and our investors want! However, unplanned, rapid growth can send any business into financial ruin. Remember, customers have little patience for your trial and error. Start now to create effective systems to handle new business.

Hire the right people. As one client said, “The most expensive cost is the interval between when I realize an employee needs to go, and when I actually make it happen.” Hire slowly and fire quickly. Why? People who fit their job responsibilities are more productive, build sustainable work processes, and enjoy job satisfaction. They keep your clients coming back. Research confirms it — companies and employees and clients all benefit! (Develop your strategic hiring system today: BizSavvyHire.com)

Work smarter, not harder.  Are your systems set-up for the convenience of your employees? Or, for the convenience of your customers? Win-win outcomes require both! Working smarter requires asking both before making changes!

  • Listen to their opinions: What works for them? What doesn’t work for them?
  • Allow them to clarify before asking: What else can we do to help you grow?

Your attitude makes a difference. A wise entrepreneur once said, “When you think you have it all handled, you’ve set yourself up for failure.” Denial may work temporarily; however, when you’ve lost a large customer, it’s time to face facts. You have a learning opportunity to keep the ones you have. Ongoing training is critical for your employees in product, technology, sales, pricing and operations. It builds cohesive, knowledgeable teams – and keeps customers coming back. Don’t forget management coaching for you and your executive team. Ongoing training and coaching should be the last areas you slash as cost-saving measures!

Company growth requires keeping your eye on managing the metrics and empowering employees to manage the details successfully.

Jeannette Seibly has been an international business and executive coach for over 20 years. She has guided the creation of three millionaires. Are you the next one? http://SeibCo.com/contact

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2015

Are your next leaders ready?

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Many companies today are starting to feel the squeeze of needing experienced leadership and looking for it in all the wrong places. It starts with vetting and onboarding your future leaders now and providing them the learning opportunities they need to build business acumen. (Read more on this topic is my eGuide “Companies and Executives Need to Vet and Onboard Each Other!” http://ow.ly/qYzMB)

Onboarding your leaders in new jobs require:

    • An inside mentor and outside business advisor (or executive coach)
    • Building upon strengths and providing opportunities to develop and grow
    • Developing initiative, resourcefulness, and an ability to work with and through others to achieve results through collaborative opportunities
    • Very importantly, coachability. Hiring know-it-alls will only limit their ability to grow, be promotable and your company’s ability to attract and retain top talent.

Use a strategic hiring process to ensure the candidate can do the job now and appears to have the objective ability to be promoted in the future. Qualified selection and coaching assessments along with qualified 360-degree feedback can make a significant difference in selecting and developing the right person, one with executive potential, regardless of past work experience. (http://SeibCo.com/assessments)  

When interviewing candidates for employment or promotions, drill down—most candidates are adept at telling you what you want to hear. Ask the right tough questions and listen to their responses and examples. Many times candidates truly believe they can handle job responsibilities and don’t take into consideration other life commitments, a different work culture, or different expectations required in the executive office. Devise a structure to ensure that if candidates fail, they aren’t automatically fired. You’ve invested a lot of time and money in employees’ success—simply restructure their upward movement in a lateral direction. (For additional insights in how to interview, get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees: Second Edition (http://BizSavvyHire.com)

Learning Opportunities Can Be Priceless

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As a leader, it’s important for you to be receptive to new ideas generated through collaboration between different work groups. They foster teamwork and can bring about cost-effective and competitive-edge systems, procedures, and off-the-wall solutions. Create a safe structure for employees to take their ideas and run them through the company’s business model – doing so enables employees to understand how business decisions are made.  Include budgetary and other market-driven concerns in their learning repertoire. Remember, some of these innovations will work and some won’t— it’s how you handle the debrief that will provide priceless learning opportunities and encouragement.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Promote the best, not the ones you like the best.

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Too often we use a “halo effect “when promoting employees into leadership roles or coveted opportunities. These people looks like the right ones because we like them or they’ve done something extraordinary recently. Unfortunately, they may not have the thinking style, core behaviors, or occupational interests to get the job done in their new positions. To approach promotion more objectively, first, understand the competencies required of the job. Second, use qualified assessments to discern candidates’ inherent strengths and weaknesses. Third, promote based upon merit, not likeability. Always use the same strategic hiring system for both internal promotions and external hires. To learn how to create a strategic hiring system that works, get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition, http://BizSavvyHire.com.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Culture is the fall guy

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Why do so many executives fail in new jobs? While many blame company culture, I would suggest that culture is the scapegoat. Poor cultural fit simply amplifies or points out what the C-suite or board members on the hiring committee failed to uncover during the vetting or onboarding process!

Instead of blaming culture, management teams should take the time to think through and write out a strategic hiring process that works, and design it to ensure that each party explores and investigates the other. They should use qualified systems and tools, trust the process, and follow it. Remember, more conversations will be required when hiring an executive to ensure consistency of philosophy and provide deeper exploration of issues and potential solutions. If you follow a well-designed system and use it in the spirit in which it was intended, you will know that you’ve done your best to ensure a positive partnership—even though there are never any guarantees. Excerpt from Companies and Executives Need to Vet and Onboard Each Other! http://SeibCo.com/books/eguides   

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Are Your Company’s Values Meaningful?

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Everyone brings their own set of personal values into a company, whether it’s when to pay bills, if and when to respect authority or follow rules, or even what’s an acceptable time to arrive at work or an event. Some employees’ values will naturally fit into your organization’s culture, while other employees won’t align with your written business practices and unwritten business expectations. (Qualified core value assessments can reduce selection errors so you hire the right people with values that match your organization. [http://SeibCo.com/assessments ])

The purpose of having a written set of company values is to get everyone on the same page in order to create a workable structure for open communication, clarity of expectations and ethics, respect, trust, and so on. For values to have a positive influence, all employees and managers within an organization need to feel free to voice their concerns and learn how to interact without fear of retribution. Creating meaningful workplace values contributes to reducing turnover, increasing sustainable profits, and building a positive business reputation, since everyone is working from the same set of company principles.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Have you hired a salesperson who can’t sell?

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Selecting salespeople who can actually sell is a huge challenge for any employer, particularly when a significant number of applicants stretch the truth or lie. When technical sales skills are required, the level of deception increases to offset lack of experience or poor results in previous positions. Even if they did well and sold the same or similar products or services for your competitor, it doesn’t mean they can or will produce the same level of results for you. 

Many times sales managers are misled when applicants:

  • Have very good verbal skills (which does not mean they have the personality and/or interests to deliver the results);
  • Appear to be good team players (many good salespeople are not); or
  • Are able to sell themselves (which does not mean they can sell your products or services).

Measuring sales metrics during the interview, not after, requires you to ask the right questions and listen to candidates’ responses. Be specific in your questions by asking for actual numbers, percentages, and increases or decreases in results. It will not eliminate the need to use valid assessments that objectively, reliably, and legally measure your candidates’ true match to your sales job.  http://SeibCo.com/assessments

©Jeannette Seibly, 2013

Emotional hiring can be dangerous!

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Many executives are good decision-makers or they wouldn’t have the title. However, many are so busy that they fail to listen during interviews unless the candidate says the right things. Then their impulsiveness and impatience kicks in and they hire people that “feel like the right ones”! Hiring based on intuitive powers may sound great, but in reality it is an excuse for not using a strategic hiring system.  

Anytime you hire someone who doesn’t fit all the necessary job requirements but has the likeability factor, you’re doomed for failure. Frequent job-seekers—people with backgrounds to hide and manipulative types—have honed their interview skills well! They know what to say and how to sell themselves to get a job. They know how to be likeable.

Infuse objectivity early in the hiring process. (http://wp.me/p2POui-nj ) This will significantly reduce the possibility of interviewing these types of job candidates and falling into the emotional hiring trap. Use a structured interview process, qualified assessments, and due diligence. Call those references! (Learn how to hire the right person. Get your copy of Hire Amazing Employees, Second Edition. It could save your own job!  http://BizSavvyHire.com)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Is your ethical compass spinning?

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When ethical issues get overlooked during the design and implementation of a project, everyone blames somebody else. It’s very easy to succumb to the strongest advocate’s point of view that ethical issues won’t matter. But the problems created by lies or by dismissing the truth won’t resolve themselves. As the leader, you need to guide your team on how to proceed. Make it easy for your employees and peers to bring these types of concerns to your attention—discovering ethical issues down the road usually makes them more costly, if not impossible, to fix. Don’t shoot the messenger! Don’t blame the informer for someone else’s theft or violation of company policy. Is your ethical compass still spinning? Now is the time to call a highly experienced business advisor, someone who can confidentially bring clarity on how to resolve ethical issues. Remember, ethical doesn’t always mean easy!  http://SeibCo.com/contact

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Are your hiring practices sane?

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Recent research data revealed by Google’s head of HR, Laszlo Bock, showed that brainteaser interview questions, unstructured interviews, student GPAs or test scores, and conducting more than four interviews all had little or no predictive value for success of job candidates! (http://www.ere.net/tags/backgroundchecking) Designing a simple yet predictive hiring system means thinking through your approach from the both sides of the desk: the applicant’s and the hiring manager’s. Infuse objectivity early in your process (http://wp.me/p2POui-nj) and use qualified assessments with high predictive values to help determine job fit. For other ideas, get your copy of “Hire Amazing Employees.” (http://BizSavvyHire.com)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013